Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (77 page)

Yet within the first few hours the insurrection began to go awry. The rebel officers killed Prime Minister Okada's secretary, but Okada and Privy Seal Makino escaped; they failed to secure the Sakashita Gate to the palace, so allowing the palace to continue communicating with the outside; and they made no preparations to deal with the navy. In Yokosuka, naval base commander Rear Adm. Yonai Mitsumasa and his chief of staff, Inoue Shigeyoshi, ordered marines to guard the Navy Ministry building and gathered warships in Tokyo Bay in preparation for suppressing the rebels.
³⁴
On the morning of February 28, after fruitless negotiations through sympathetic officers in central army headquarters, the martial-law
commander in the occupied area transmitted an imperial order to disperse. Most of the troops returned to barracks, one officer committed suicide, the remaining leaders surrendered, and the uprising collapsed without further bloodshed.
³⁵
Martial law in Tokyo, however, continued for nearly five months.

The rebel officers had originally planned to have the army minister, General Kawashima, who was associated with the Imperial Way faction, report their intentions to the emperor, who would then issue a decree declaring a “Sh
wa restoration.” Despite their radical aim—overthrowing of the political order—the mutineers (like other military and civilian extremists of the 1930s) assumed the legitimacy and intended to operate within the framework of the imperial system and the
kokutai
.
³⁶
They saw the emperor as the puppet of his advisers and, in effect, devoid of a will of his own. Once the lord keeper of the privy seal and the grand chamberlain were out of the way, they believed, the emperor could be counted on to bestow the mantle of prime minister on General Mazaki, the hero whom they trusted to strengthen the military and resolve the China problem.

At the beginning of the insurrection they had a chance of success. The Tokyo military police commander, Gen. Kashii K
hei, was an Imperial Way sympathizer; the emperor's chief aide, General Honj
, was the father-in-law of rebel officer Capt. Yamaguchi Ichitaro; and supporters of the mutineers could be found at military bases throughout the country.

According to the historian Hata Ikuhiko, the rebels contacted General Honj
both by phone and written message prior to the attack on the Okada cabinet. Honj
, the first of the entourage to learn of the mutiny, could have warned the intended targets of their danger if he had been so inclined. He did not. By the time Honj
came to court at 6:00
A.M
. on the twenty-sixth, however, Chief Secretary Kido, Imperial Household Minister Yuasa Kurahei, and Vice Grand Chamberlain Hirohata Tadakata already knew that Sait
had
been murdered and Suzuki seriously wounded. So too did the emperor. At 5:40
A.M
. the chamberlain on night duty, Kanroji Osanaga, had awakened Hirohito and informed him that his old ministers and advisers had just been attacked and an uprising was underway.

From the moment Hirohito learned what had happened, he resolved to suppress the coup, angered at the killing of his ministers but also fearing that the rebels might enlist his brother, Prince Chichibu, in forcing him to abdicate. He put on his army uniform, received Honj
in audience, and ordered him to “[e]nd it immediately and turn this misfortune into a blessing.”
³⁷
Honj
departed, and Hirohito embraced a strategy devised by Kido and presented by Imperial Household Minister Yuasa. Kido had taken swift action earlier that morning when Honj
arrived at court, demanding that the chief-aide-de-camp immediately determine how the Imperial Guard Division would respond in the event the mutineers marched on the Palace.
³⁸
Kido's plan was to prevent the formation of a new, provisional cabinet until the mutiny had been completely crushed. At 9:30
A.M
., Army Minister Kawashima, who in January had met with Isobe, one of the main energizers of the rebel officers, came to court and performed the role that the rebels had scripted for him: He urged the emperor to form a cabinet that would “clarify the
kokutai
, stabilize national life, and fulfill national defense.” Taken aback at his army minister's obtuseness, Hirohito scolded Kawashima and ordered him to give priority to suppressing the mutiny.
³⁹
Hirohito also vented his anger that morning on Chief of the Navy General Staff Prince Fushimi, a supporter of the Fleet faction, who came to the palace to learn the emperor's intentions on forming a new cabinet and was told, in effect, to get lost.
⁴⁰